Trial and Error
by Supermorff
Summary: It's set in a box at the bottom of the ocean, where Angel contemplates the events that have brought him there and is contacted by the Powers That Be. It was written at the end of Angel Season 3, with minor spoilers for everything up to that point.


A friend of mine tried to get me to change the title of this to 'Trial and Improvement', until I told him that he was missing the point of the story. Set (and written) at the end of Angel Season 3 and Buffy Season 6, Angel is imprisoned at the bottom of the ocean (sorry if you didn't know that). He contemplates the events that have led himto where he is, and is contacted by the Powers That Be.

**Spoiler warning: **Spoilers for everything up to 'Grave' (BtVS) and 'Tomorrow' (AtS).

**Disclaimer: **I haven't paid for any characters or places, so I own none of them. Nevertheless, just as Joss has creative control of the show, I suppose I have creative control of this story.

**Comment: **This was written before I'd seen the Angel episode 'Epiphany' (which blew my mind), so some things may not track with that episode.

* * *

The casket sank deeper and deeper. I was surprised it could sink so low. True, I had been unconscious when I was brought aboard the boat, but I had thought we were closer to shore than this. Finally I felt the thud of the box hitting the seabed, and knew that all I could do was lie there and think.

Time lost all meaning in the darkness of those depths, and I don't know how long I was there before I started to waste away for lack of blood. My muscles shrivelled up and my skin shrank, pulled tight over my bones. I was little more than a skeleton when the voices started.

At first they were indistinct, and I thought I was going mad. Being starved of blood can sometimes do that to a vampire like me, though I am more used to it than most. Soon, though, I realised that the voices were speaking coherent words, and that they were speaking to me. And it didn't take me long to figure out who the voices belonged to. You must understand, first of all, that the following conversation did not happen all at once, but took place over a long time, and the voices, though represented here as words, were more like ideas placed in my head.

"Angel," said the voices, "how did you come to be here? The reasons behind the journey to your current predicament elude us; even we, that foresaw your coming millennia before you were born, we that arranged for the return of your soul, that you might fight for us, do not truly understand."

"The Powers That Be?" I managed to stutter, even in my decrepit state. I could sense… gladness that I had guessed, as if the voices were smiling at me.

"Yes, we speak for 'The Powers That Be'. We are the Metatron. We arranged for you to be a Warrior, gave you advantages over other Warriors, yet here you are, trapped for all eternity. Why?"

"I am still a Warrior. You can release me." I should not have asked that of them, but I was scared for my continued existence. Even in the half a century during which I chased rats for sustenance, I had never felt so weak. Perhaps it was the lack of blood, perhaps it was the sadness of the betrayal that had sent me here. Either way, I was desperate at that time to get out. Now, I am almost glad they refused. Almost.

"No. We will not release you."

"But why not? You speak as if my entire life has been predetermined, arranged so that I can do your bidding. And you have promised me mortality…"

"Silence! You are wrong. Fate is not predetermined. Even the Prophecies of Aberjian that predict the End of Days are not always correct. In the battles against the First, our agents must have free will or they could never win. However, free will gives them opportunity to neglect duty, to forget about us, or even to cross over to the legions of the First. We are constantly testing our Warriors – you most of all – to make sure they are worthy to serve our cause and, oftentimes, we are forced to clear up after their mistakes."

"Mistakes? Do you mean my losing my soul? Was that a test? Did you cause Jenny Calendar's death?"

"Ah, your romance with the Slayer, Buffy. That was no test. Love and free will tend to go hand in hand, but in your case it was, as you say, meant to be. The consequences were merely… unexpected."

"Unexpected?"

"As for the teacher, well… in that period you became a minion of the First, with all that that entails. In fact it was your murder" – I flinched at the word – "of the teacher that forced us to play our hand. When you planned to awaken Acathla – which was fate, by the way, and would have happened regardless of your involvement – we were forced to send Whistler to the Slayer to tell her how to defeat you."

"Whistler?"

"He may only be a balance demon – a Switzerland in our multi-planar war – but he had taken an interest in you, and even he understood the threat Acathla posed to the world. So he went to Sunnydale on our behalf and told her that your blood would close the portal. It became a good test for her, actually."

"Which she passed by sending me to Hell."

"Yes that was very noble, sacrificing her love for the world. But you should have lived. How could we be a force – _the_ force – for good if we sanctioned sending anyone to somewhere like that? Striking you down sooner, piercing Acathla with a blade merely smeared with your blood, any number of things she could have done to spare you your time in Hell. Another mess for us to sort out. And _that_ one took a lot of effort. It isn't easy, even for us, to open portals directly into the realm of the First. We don't even know the entire layout within, always shifting as it is, so we had to send operatives in to find you, which you won't remember of course."

"Whistler again?"

"Whistler? Hah! He considered balance restored and, as much as he liked you, he felt you were a continuing threat to that balance. Both ways. No, we are quite sure you will not have met or heard of those that risked their souls and continued existence to rescue you."

"So you mean it was _you_ that got me out of Hell? But that following Christmas, the First…"

"The First told you that it took you out of Hell so you would turn evil again. And you believed it. Yet another failed test, though not of our devising. You would have been destroyed by the dawn had we not caused the snow to save you. It takes a lot of power to change weather patterns like that. You were just lucky it was winter."

"Okay, so I made some mistakes. I'll not deny it, but I passed other tests you've set me."

"Really? Why did you leave Sunnydale?"

"To spare Buffy the pain of loving me… and what would come after. She deserves a normal life… and a normal boyfriend."

"And you thought that if you left, she would have a normal life?"

"Yes." And I was cursed them silently for digging up such old and painful memories.

"But she has not had a normal life. She has suffered terribly, and for a long time she became more distant, bitter. Only now are the scars of your departure, and her subsequent death, finally healing."

"What about Riley?"

"Riley, yes. He was a loving boy, cared for her deeply, but the feeling was never really returned in full, and he was no Warrior. In fact it was partly jealousy for Buffy's love of you that he left."

"And of course you had a hand in it."

"Of course. It is so easy to manipulate the minds of the weak-willed. She was devastated, unfortunately, both by his leaving and the news of his marriage."

"He's married?"

"Yes. And now she's degraded herself more than you know."

"How?" But no answer came. Instead there was a lengthy pause before they continued.

"And because of your journey to LA, and lack of contact with the Slayer, we were forced to provide you with a new reason to 'help the helpless'. Buffy could no longer inspire you, so we sent you…"

"Doyle. You sent Doyle a vision, and he sought me out. And he died because of it."

"That is true, but it was his journey. It was his destiny to pledge himself to the good fight and die a martyr, saving the lives of many innocents. Your influence merely sped up that journey, you cannot be held responsible for his demise."

"That aside, I have done much good in LA. I have saved many people, and many souls."

"Yes, but we were bound to use you as a Warrior no matter where you were. And had you not been in LA, another Warrior would have stepped in… like Wesley." At the traitor's name my blood (what little I had left) boiled. And they picked up on it. "That was one of your worst mistakes, Angel, turning Wesley away. He tried to save the world, against the wishes of his closest companion, tricked by Sahjhan though he was, and you, the man he had tried to protect above all else, could not forgive him. You have set him on the path to darkness, and now the damage is all but irreparable."

"But…"  
"No, we will speak no more on this." I could have sworn that the temperature in my small cage rose by several degrees. They must have been really angry about that travesty. Once they had changed the subject, however, the air seemed to slowly return to normal. "The most baffling behaviour," they continued, "was your apparent desire to cause yourself misery."

"What do you mean?"

"Take the Ring of Amara for example. We arranged – or at least encouraged – its passage into your hands. It was to aid you in your fight. If you were a powerful Warrior without the Ring, you would have been unstoppable with it. And as Doyle said, 'Think of all the daytime people you could help between nine and five'." The imitation was so perfect I could only assume it was some spiritual recording of Doyle's voice. I almost tried looking around for him in my cage. But of course, he was dead, and not there. "Yet you never saw your Sun again, and why? You destroyed the ring, because it imitated redemption. You are truly a fool to think you would forget the horrors of the night by living in the day. You are a Warrior, like Buffy, and like her you could have fought the monsters of both worlds. But now that path is closed to you forever."

"But what about the prophecy? I was promised humanity."

"Humanity you have in spades, unlike some humans. The prophecy promised mortality. And even our greatest prophecies, the Scroll of Aberjian or the Codex, those prophecies that are never wrong, can be thwarted, as they give only literal truth. You witnessed this yourself at the resurrection of the Master. You were never named in the Scroll, Angel, only a vampire with a soul will Shanshu."

"There are other vampires with souls?"

"There are now." They did not elaborate. "And even if the prophecy does refer to you, which is our choice, we could still translate Shanshu as death if you displease us. Such a usefully vague word for such an important prophecy. Do not think the prophecy makes you invulnerable." There was a pause as the words sunk in. Truth be told, I had hardly considered the prophecy in the past two years. It was mine, I had known that, very distant, perhaps centuries away, but it was still undeniably mine. And now the Powers That Be themselves were telling me that if I did not measure up as a Warrior – and how could I if trapped on the seabed for all eternity? – that they would strip me of that reward.

Eventually they continued, "And even then, if and when you become human, you will lose your strength with your immortality, lose your accelerated healing as well as your bloodlust. You will no longer be a Warrior. You will be as weak and as helpless against the forces of darkness as you were during the day erased by our hands."

"That day… I take it you played some role on that day too?"

"We play roles on all days… that one especially. That day was a gift, but a test also."

"But the Oracles said that you hadn't granted me my humanity."

"The Oracles, when they still lived, were our messengers on your plane, nothing more. They could no better touch our thoughts than you can. You yourself heard them beseech the auguries. The auguries were merely more messengers, taking those words we deem they should know to the Oracles. You see, even the Oracles had to go through 'channels' to reach us. You should be honoured that we are deigning to talk to you now.

"Regardless, they were correct. The Mohra demon whose regenerative blood cured you of your vampirism was a Warrior of the First. Perhaps the First intended to make you mortal, we are unsure. Nevertheless, we had the power to return your status as a Warrior, so we made a test for you."

"Which I passed by asking the Oracles to turn me back."

"It was very noble, but you immediately assumed that there was no half-way. The mistakes you made that day were largely to do with your drastic assumptions. It is true that what the Mohra demon said that the End of Days is coming. But for creatures like the Mohra demon that have been around and fighting the War since before Man was even cognisant, time passes much slower than for, well, someone as young as you. The End of Days is approaching, but has been doing so since the dawn of time – it was inevitable that two powers as idealistically opposed as us and the First should eventually come to blows."

"It's like a spiritual Cold War?"

"Hardly cold, and it's about to get a whole lot hotter. As for the exact date of the End of Days, we cannot be entirely certain. Like the 'tro clon' with which you should be intimately familiar, it is a confluence of events, though much grander and more difficult to predict. You assumed it would occur in Buffy Summers' lifetime, and that she would be the Slayer to die."

"You mean she won't die?"

"Of course she will… again… but whether or not she will die at the End of Days is uncertain, and not for you to know, regardless. The point is, even a Warrior as you are, you cannot prevent her eventual fate." There was a pause.

"You said it was a test and gift. What did you mean?"

"As Cordelia may or may not have told you, we are not usually in the habit of folding time. Usually we merely replace the undesirable time span with a better one. In your case, though, we made an exception."

"You wanted to make sure I would go through with it… that I would have the strength to let it all go."

"Yes, but more than that. For your nobility, we wanted you to remember the time you had. A sort of… preview of your reward. If we decide to give it to you."

"That was so… thoughtful of you. To give me some of the most painful memories of my entire existence… worse even than when I was evil. But then, they were also some of the best."

"You also had an opportunity to make things better. You put back the day to protect Buffy, but you didn't even try. What was the first thing you did when we took back the day?"

"I… told her to forget me."

"You let her leave. No wonder she died. You didn't even try to save her."

"Stop." At this point I was getting quite angry at the criticisms, even if they did come from on high, and my following words were laced with bile. "I suppose you had to fix that mistake as well? You played some vital role in her resurrection?"

"We had to. A new Slayer is called when the current one dies."

"Yeah, I know the drill."

"But Buffy had already died. With her dead and Faith incarcerated, we would have lost our active Slayer, and a valuable Warrior. So we… convinced Osiris, god of the dead, not to interfere. The witch took care of the rest. It opened her to the warping influence of the First's magic, but that was unfortunately unavoidable. In fact her downfall was a mirror of your own – surely you remember losing all faith in humanity? We tested you very often in that period, but you always failed. You let the lawyers die, you fired your friends. We feared the First had gotten the better of you and were about to renounce you – revoke your status as a Warrior – when the most fascinating thing happened." Oh yes, the incident with Darla. They just _had_ to bring that up. "Here we thought you would become the demon Angelus again and instead it restored your faith in humanity, as if Doyle himself had visited you that night and reminded you that you fight for souls, not just people."

"You had something to do with that." It wasn't a question, I was so sure of it.

"Oddly, no. We neither encouraged nor tried to prevent your… epiphany. We saw it as the inevitable product of your downfall. We also knew, as we had prophesied, that you would one day have a child by a woman of great power. We had assumed however, that it would be by the Slayer. Instead it was by a vampire. Curious. Fortunate for the Slayer, of course, as Darla died in the process. But being the child of two vampires helped your son to betray you, which is, remember, why you're here."

"I love my son, no matter what he's done to me."

"Oh yes, so do we. Let him work through whatever misconceptions and issues he has and he will eventually become a most powerful Warrior for our cause – more powerful even than you, we expect. Remember, he is destined to defeat Sahjhan: a battle you were unable to win." Sure, rub it in. "He must get to that point first though, and will need guidance. With the Groosalugg gone, Lorne in Las Vegas and you trapped down here, that leaves only Fred and Gunn, and he is already stronger than both of them."

"What about Cordelia?"

"Ah, Cordelia, our Champion and Seer. She has ascended to a higher plane so that she may fight for us on a new level."

"What? But we were getting so close. I really think we were starting to… love each other."

"And why do you think we had to step up her ascension? She was to walk this mortal plane for years to come, learning to use all of her new-found powers, but we had to prevent your union. You should have heard some of the excuses Skip gave her." Skip? Didn't I beat him up? And why was I thinking of such trivial things when they had given me such bad news?

"But why?"

"Lorne called you and Cordelia Champions. It's an understandable mistake to make, but you are no Champion, Angel. You are a Warrior." That stumped me.

"What's the difference?"

"You, like all Warriors, fight the forces of evil. Champions right wrongs. A fine line, it is true, and most of the time the two will do the same work. But Warriors have a drive, something that gives them the strength and the focus to take down the greatest monsters. Champions are, quite frankly, dime a dozen, but Warriors are rare, a special breed. Champions, even the exceptional ones like Cordelia, blend in with the populace, live among humans, even seek their company. Warriors, as I'm sure you've discovered, are thrown into the fight, considered freaks by those who don't understand. They can only love other Warriors, because only Warriors can understand their plight, their cause, their commitment. Some break the rules, but as with Buffy's romances since your departure, such relationships never survive long. You and Buffy are kindred spirits – perfect for each other – and without each other you will always be alone." I had made so many mistakes, it suddenly became clear. I was meant for Buffy and I had not only left her, I had all but forgotten her. I had failed most every test set for me by the Powers, but apparently they didn't care as long as I did what I thought was right.

"I guess all I can do now," I mused, "is lie here forever thinking about what I did wrong."

"Oh _please_! You'll be fished out by the end of the year." And the Metatron, voice of the Powers That Be, finally fell silent.


End file.
